Maybe Today
by fiesa
Summary: Take a step, jump a mile. Twenty in-season and post-ep drabbles- Mac, Harm and a relationship that can't quite keep up with its participants.
1. 01 - Maybe Today

**Maybe Today**

_Summary: Take a step, jump a mile. Twenty in-season and post-ep drabbles- Mac, Harm and a relationship that can't quite keep up with its participants. _

_Warning: -_

_Set: Along the series, especially the later ones. Drabbles that belong to a certain episode will be indicated. _

_Disclaimer: Standards apply._

___A/N: Merry Christmas to all of you! (Dez 2013)_

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_#1 – Maybe Today_

She needs three minutes in the shower and two to dry herself and get dressed. In that way, every morning is similar.

Sarah MacKenzie regards herself in the mirror quickly: short, auburn hair, a pale face, the tight fit of her Marines uniform. The scent of coffee rises from her small kitchen, it tastes like every day. Morning as usual and yet something is different today. A strange tension is growing in her chest, something she thought she left behind long ago. She feels giddy: like there is something that will happen today that she can't wait for to happen. At the same time, she burns to get back to her own investigation.

Calm down, she tells herself half-firm, half-desperate. Calm down. It will be alright. She hasn't felt like this since… ever. It's not anticipation or dread, not even nerves. But whatever it is – she has no time for this. The sun outside is warm, a reminder of a summer yet to come. The door of her apartment closes with an audible sound. As she walks down the stairs she thinks she imagines the finality in it.

Today, Sarah thinks. Today. Who knows what will happen. She's a marine and a lawyer. She has faced everything thrown at her by life until now and she intends to continue doing so. While she leaves the house her tension turns to elation, t anticipation, even joy. She walks down the street, her car keys already in her hand, and suddenly feels very, very calm.

(At the end of the day she is reassigned. A new chapter begins.)


	2. 02 - Ideas

_#2 – Ideas (Season 4 Episode 7 Angel 30)_

Harm's idea was to take Commander Rice for a flight the last time. The CAG's idea was to maybe be able to use the aviator-turned-lawyer to persuade one of his best aviators to not resign – and the Captain's idea was to give them whatever they wanted in order to get them off his ship as fast as possible. JAG lawyers, Mac had learned early in her career, were not a species anyone liked much when it came to it but as the Captain had so poignantly stated they were great if one needed someone to blame.

She thinks that maybe this is the time they will be blamed for something big time, and rightly.

But neither Rice nor his RIO had had the idea to black out because of a contaminated oxygen flask, and nobody had had the idea to enter the Iranian fly zone, either. It was just one of the things that happened.

It is her idea, nevertheless, to try to switch off the autopilot.

It was a silly question, one she wouldn't have allowed herself with Harm around. He wasn't there, lucky her. _Lucky him_, because there was actually something they could do. It sounded simple: tilt the wings of the Tomcat forty-five degrees and the autopilot will switch off. "You need a pilot that's damn more than just good to do this," the Captain grunted, and Mac knew they had exactly the man they needed.

"Frankly, I expected something like that to come from her," Harm transmits and Mac wants to glare at him as much as she wants to scream at him to stop. He can't do it every time. He can't get away every time. There has to be an end to his capricious suicide missions, and it won't be a good one-

Harm managed it. Of course he did. He always did, seconds before the crash, before radar detection, before the enemies concentrated their fire. Harm was a last-second-kind of man. The two fighter jets landed and Mac watched her partner climb from the cockpit, grinning his usual, infuriating smile. Safe and sound. This day being, once again, not his day to die.

And she wants to punch him. Hard.


	3. 03 - Expressions

_# 3 – Expressions (Season 7 episode 21 Defending His Honor)_

It's his smile that kills her, over and over.

Mac has, by now, gotten used to the fact – or at least as used as she would ever get because she isn't sure she'll ever actually _get used_ to it – that Harm's smile is able to wreak havoc on her countenance. Sometimes it's small and pensive, and sometimes lonely, and most of the times it is full of humor – but sometimes it is challenging and she hates it the most.

His _I know something you don't and I'm going to use it_ smile.

The one smile she knows so well and has seen so often; and why is it that it still makes her want to instinctively cower and shield herself from the explosion that is about to follow? She's a marine, she can handle herself. Maybe she just can't handle Harm. It would explain so much.

"I'll see you in court, Colonel," he says, and the expression on his face is enough to make her stop and wish she wasn't about to do what she will be doing. If she just wasn't so damn competitive. But then, he is, too, and it is what makes them get along so well.

(Or perhaps not.)

On those days she wishes she could just be his friend. His best friend, if she can't be with him (she told Sturgis she was in love with Harm but on some days she does not believe herself), it would be so much more than _this_ and so much less at the same time but at least they wouldn't be skirting the subject. Walking the line, practicing denial; she doesn't care what it is called since the outcome is the same. If they weren't colleagues perhaps she would have been able to leave him behind long ago. As it is he is a part of her so strongly she cannot sever it any more than she can cut off her own hand.

One thing she has come to notice over the years: when he smiles at her at the end of the court session, there is no triumph in his eyes anymore.

At least this is something they've managed to overcome. Mac thinks she can live with competitiveness if there is no undue joy in winning, at least as long as it means Harm accepts her as his equal.


	4. 04 - Mine Field

_# 4 – Mine Field (Season 7 episode 23 In Country)_

_Bam._

Harm's eyes are open.

It is what burns itself into her memory: his eyes are _open_. Wide, steel-grey and empty against the sawdust sky. There is no trace of life in them. When the marines reach her Sarah MacKenzie is crouching next to her dead partner. Her arms wrapped around herself tightly, she is rocking back and forth without seeing anything. She doesn't cry when his coffin is loaded unto the plane and she doesn't cry when they unload it again. Her eyes are dry when the tomcats shoot past in missing man formation. She never cries again.

Inwardly, she screams.

_Bam._

The Humvee explodes in a brilliant flare.

It burns out on the road side of a dust track in Afghanistan. When the marines from the nearby camp finally arrive it is nothing more than a smoking ruin of metal and circuitry. The two bodies they pull from it are barely recognizable: a female, protection vest and scraps of cloth fused to her bones, her face burned so badly her features have melted. Parts of her hands still cling to the steering wheel. A male, tall, dressed in the same fatigues: both with their dog-tags almost unreadable. Their identification, nevertheless, is unproblematic. The Humvee was assigned to Lieutenant Colonel Sarah MacKenzie and Lieutenant Commander Harmon Rabb Jr., both senior staff members of JAG corps.

The flowers on their graves always are fresh.

_Bam. Bam._

"MAC!"

The ringing in his ears is overwhelming, dust and rubble settle everywhere and still Harm is on his feet as fast as possible. He's almost out of the Humvee when his training sets in: _mine field. Don't leave the vehicle. _"Mac!" He shouts again, panic constricting his voice. The dust around the Humvee settles slowly, too slowly, and only then he sees the small figure on the ground a few meters away from the car. A still figure. Too still. Her arms are spread-eagled at her sides, her one leg strangely bent under her body. _And she isn't moving. _From his heightened view-point he can see her face: still beautiful even with a bloody scrape across her right cheek. But her eyes are open and there is no life in them. "Mac. Mac, answer me! Mac!" He jumps out of the Humvee, crosses the grey sand desert between them with as few steps as possible, crouches down next to her. The pulse is barely there. "Hold on, Mac, it's gonna be alright." Gathering her up carefully and trying not to think about what damage he could be doing, he makes his way over back to the Humvee. Harm doesn't think he's ever driven so fast.

Sarah MacKenzie dies in the marine base camp four hours later.

_Bam._

"Harm! Harm, are you okay?"

He wakes with a start, bolting up in his cot, and training kicks in: Afghanistan, marine base camp, _the mine field. _Mac. He can feel her fluttering pulse under his fingers, feels the feeble press of her hand – _I'm not going anywhere – _and terror grips him so hard he starts shaking. _No. It can't be true. _"Harm." Mac is right there, her eyes full of concern. In full combat uniform, including vest, but it is still _Mac_. Staring at her, taking her in, Harm is gripped by the desperate need to pull her close and check she _really_ is still alive. He restrains himself. Why has their adventure two days before shaken him so much? It's hardly the first time one of them almost died. Maybe it was the bombing they watched that night. Or the thought that Mac could have died. Or maybe the nightmare. The nightmares, he corrects himself. "Are you alright?" Mac asks quietly.

"Yeah. Bad dream. Sorry for waking you."

She smiles slightly. "Couldn't sleep, anyway."


	5. 05 - Partners

_# 5 – Partners (Season 8 episode 3 Family Business) _

When has she started looking at him as a partner, not an opponent?

Mac isn't sure what to think of the development. It is as if old structures suddenly have broken, as if traditions have been defied without a conscious thought. It had been MacKenzie versus Rabb for so many times she forgot to count. In court, in the bullpen, even in places like Russia and Australia. It became MacKenzie and Rabb after some time, though more out than in the court room, when their friendship deepened and the blows softened and there was someone else in their lives to create a barrier between them. And now it is Harm and Mac, over and over, and somehow…

It scares her.

When she thinks about it. When she doesn't, it is the most natural thing in the universe. They think alike, they work alike, they exist next to each other as if it never was any different and weeks and months and years have passed in the blink of an eye. She loves working with him, even if he infuriates her. She loves arguing with him and she loves to see how their work pays off when they are successful. He is not the first person in her life she realizes she cannot stop loving. It's just the way she is, probably, and maybe it doesn't mean that much. Many failed relationships have made her stop and consider. Maybe it is not romantic love she feels for him? It probably isn't. It is frightening nevertheless.

It is almost a relief when she finally finds herself on the other side of the courtroom again.


	6. 06 - for the night is dark

_A/N: Shameless reference to "A Game of Thrones"._

* * *

_# 6 – for the night is dark (Season 8 episode 22 Lawyers, Guns and Money)_

_How is it that you're only interested in me when I'm one foot out of the door?_

Mac is gone and without her the bullpen seems just a little bit too silent and Harm's heart a little bit too empty. The nightmares don't help him to get over the worry that is gnawing at him from inside out, there is nothing that can distract him. He feels unsettled, like he does not belong anywhere anymore, and this is new: Harmon Rabb Jr. _always_ knew where he belonged, even when he thought about leaving JAG. Now he finds there was a reason to that, apparently.

And why is he so worried? It is just a mission. Just a mission like so many they took before.

The reason for his unrest probably were her parting words. It is an unfair accusation, he thinks, because of course he's not only interested in her when she's walking away from him. It is only in those moments that he cannot keep his feelings in check. Sometimes it scares him. His feelings for this headstrong, courageous, beautiful woman have intensified with every day he has worked side by side with her. First she was his rival, then his colleague, then his friend. They have reached the point in which he calls her his best friend but doesn't dare to go any further: something inside him screams that she might leave, or that she might reject him, or that she might be assigned to another duty station. And he thinks he can't live with his heart getting broken all over again. So friends it is.

And they are fine. They are fine being friends until she turns her back on him and attempts to leave – with Dalton, with Mic, and now with Webb – and suddenly Harm is drowning in nameless terror. Being her best friend while being together and seeing each other every day is fine. He can cope with her keeping her distance; he can deal with his own fears and shadows when she is close. But when she leaves they all come rushing back in a crushing avalanche. _I don't want you to go_ – what a stupid thing to say. But he has no explanation, no reasonable excuse. The words on his lips die still-born. It should be so easy – it was, with other women and at other times – but with Mac? No. _Never_. He could try to explain but he doubts she would understand.

Harm loves Mac.

Collect the evidence: he is terrified of losing her. As long as she is there being her friend is enough. The mere thought of her leaving (_him_) is a black tunnel stretching out before him for the rest of his life. That is why he tried to stop her.

The proof is simple and devastating: words fail him, again and again.


End file.
